Writer publishes Kindle book as a tool to build a following

Like most authors, Kimberly Pryor wants to sell a bazillion copies of her new book through Amazon.com.

But the business strategy developed by the Gardnerville resident looks beyond sales of her new e-book, "The Indestructible Relationship."

Pryor wants to create a cadre of loyal readers, then use the existence of that ready-made market as a tool to help her win a publishing contract from a traditional book publisher.

And in all that, writing the book a collection of 10 true stories of couples who remained together despite tough times was the easy part.

"The Indestructible Relationship" was an outgrowth of a magazine article developed by Pryor, but the book initially was rejected by several agents. The writer was undaunted.

"The more I thought it about, the more I believed in it," Pryor says.

She began learning about traditional self-publishing, then shifted her interest to electronic self-publishing as the Kindle and other e-book readers continued to gain popularity.

Unlike traditional self-publishing, which requires the author to come up with the price of typesetting, printing and binding a book, self-publishing is far less expensive.

But Pryor notes that self-publishing an e-book isn't free, especially if the author wants to do it right.

There's the cost of designing a Web site for the book. Purchasing URLs for the Web site. (Pryor bought 15.) Getting a cover designed for the book, which will help sell it on Amazon. Getting a photo of the author. Developing Facebook advertising.

The payoff, like any book-publishing venture, will come from royalties.

Amazon.com, Pryor says, offers two royalty programs for authors 70 percent of the cover price for authors who agree to price their books between $2.99 and $9.99 and 35 percent for authors who sell higher-priced e-books.

Pryor set a $9.99 price for "The Indestructible Relationship," giving her a profit of $6.96 on each sale before she donates $1 from each book to the American Red Cross.

Since putting the book on Amazon.com in late December, Pryor has made about $200, but she notes that her big marketing push has just begun.

She distributed a press release about the book right before Valentine's Day that got picked up by MSNBC.com. She's preparing to sell the book on Scribd, a site that will make the book available on mobile devices other than the Kindle. She's selling a PDF version of the book at www.indestructiblerelationship.com.

And Pryor is paying a lot of attention to pushing the book into the best-selling lists on Amazon.com.

Because Amazon.com lists best-sellers by category, Pryor paid careful attention to the categories that typically don't require huge sales before a book wins a ranking.

She listed "The Indestructible Relationship" in Amazon's "Disaster Relief" and "Physical Impairment" categories the book contains stories about both and hit the categories' best-seller lists.

That, in turn, allows her to trumpet "The Indestructible Relationship" as "a new best-selling Kindle book" in her publicity materials.

Her immediate goal for the e-book: Sell 1,000 copies or get the book into the top 100 list in the "Interpersonal Relationships" or "Relationships" categories for the Kindle.

But over the longer term, Pryor wants to build an audience for her writing.

Increasingly, she says, book publishers want authors and their agents to deliver a ready-made audience to reduce the risks of a new book publication. An audience developed by the e-book version of "The Indestructible Relationship," she says, just might open those doors.

SIDEBAR

A new marketing tactic?

While Kimberly Pryor was learning about publication on Kindle as an outlet for her own book, she also began to see possibilities for e-books as a marketing tool.

Professionals and business people who want to demonstrate their technical expertise long have turned to self-published hardback books. But those books have been expensive and often take many months to come to fruition.

An e-book, however, can be published on sites such as Amazon.com for relatively little cost although promotional efforts will require some cash and can be available more quickly than a traditionally published book.

But Pryor cautions that Amazon.com won't handle books that are out-and-out promotional items. The e-book strategy works best for folks who want to demonstrate and share their expertise, using a published book to establish their credentials among potential clients.